In another blow to the culinary world (previously I mentioned the Berkeley Scharffen Berger plant closing), the Los Angeles Times reports that Cook’s Library’s will close its doors for good on April 30. Though the store does sell books online (by request), a woman I spoke to says that staff has no plans to move to an online store format.

For those who have never been, it’s a mecca for cookbooks and culinary literary works — it was the only place I knew of that carried Ferran Adria’s early El Bulli tomes, which were printed only in Spanish. Just last year, Adria stopped into the store (his only West Coast tour stop) to sign his latest, “A Day at El Bulli.” He joins other culinary greats like Nigella Lawson, Nancy Silverton, Eric Ripert, Alice Waters and Jacques Pepin, all whom have visited the store to sign books within the past two years. The store had been open for 20.

I can’t imagine it not being there. It really is an unrivaled source for chefs and cooks in Southern California. In the future when I drive by its old location, it will really be hard to look at it without feeling a void.

The Cook’s Library, 8373 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles. 323-655-3141. www.cookslibrary.com

– Cynthia Furey

When I was a picky-eating kid, I had a few top-secret hiding/disposing places for vegetables and all other things I refused to eat but needed to give the illusion that I did.

One was my neighbor’s backyard. There, a team of Rottweilers witnessed a peculiar occurrence: Airborne food. Comestibles would take flight, arcing over an 8-foot cinder block wall and landing in the grass at their paws. Soon, the dogs would learn this phenomenon happened daily at sunset, and when the sun dipped low on the horizon, they would settle in a corner behind the wall and wait for the evening’s delivery. My delivery.

Sometimes they’d get peas or Iceberg salad. Other times, it was chicken and tofu stewed with tomatoes, glutinous rice noodles with shrimp or pieces of deep-fried sesame balls (pictured above). They weren’t picky.

While the dogs assembled, I waited for my own pattern to unfold. The setting sun meant that dinnertime was nearing its end and as always, my cold pile of vegetables remained untouched. I couldn’t leave the table until they were gone, and my mother watched me like a hawk. That is, until she had to go to the bathroom. And the minute she left the kitchen, I sprang into action.

I took my plate and burst through the back door toward the wall where the dogs were waiting on the other side. I could hear them barking in excitement as they heard my hurried footsteps grow closer. Grabbing fistfuls of vegetables, I hurled them over the concrete wall with all the strength my 9-year-old self could muster, ran back inside and waited for my mom to come back from the bathroom. She’d look at my plate, deem me done, and go about her business. I was triumphant.

Unfortunately, this method stopped working when our neighbor and his dogs moved away and the woman in their place handed my mother a small box of rotting vegetables and rock-hard sesame balls. She was not at all pleased about the daily assault of airborne food on her herb garden.

– Cynthia Furey

Side note: March Madness is a month-long challenge in which I will attempt to post Monday through Friday for the entire month. Thank you for reading!

Why I love holidays: The treat selections at bakeries double in size.

Fourth of July? Get your red, white and blue cookies here. Halloween? Orange- and brown-hued blondies. And St. Patrick’s Day – walk into any bakery, and you’ll find green in all shades: Mint chocolate brownies. Pistachio sugar cookies. Moss-green velvet cupcakes.

The latter are what caught my eye during an optometrist visit. I chose him not by his stellar credentials (though I’m sure he has them), but by what restaurants were near his office: Thai food, Vietnamese and the Layer Cake Bakery, where these moist, lovely cupcakes lived.

I normally hesitate when buying baked goods because as we bakers know, we can make them for a fraction of the purchase cost. But these seemed to speak to some deep-rooted carnal urge I have that rears its head at the sight of something uber-delicious. I’m an animal. I bought 12.

At $2.75 a pop – for a regular-sized cupcake, nonetheless – this is pretty steep. Sprinkles, which charges $3.25 per cupcake, at least tries to justify its price with a bigger one. And it’s highway robbery when you consider that baking them costs roughly less than $5 for a whole dozen. (And here we are, smack in a recession, and I’m dropping more than $30 on cupcakes. Eeegad.)

But we bakers have to admit: It’s nice to hang up your apron once in a great while to enjoy something someone else has made. In this case, I lucked out even more: These cupcakes were made by a woman I had attended culinary school with, who had a flawless reputation for her baking. But I didn’t need to know that. The airy cream cheese frosting and fluffy, rich cake speak for themselves.

Layer Cake Bakery, 4250 Barranca Parkway, Irvine, Calif. 949-786-0223. www.layercakebakery.com

– Cynthia Furey

Side note: March Madness is a month-long challenge in which I will attempt to post Monday through Friday for the entire month. Thank you for reading!

There are two types of Okonomiyaki, says my friend Mark, who spent the last few years teaching English in Fukuoka, Japan. He was in my kitchen, readying us for a quick lesson in Japanese food.

Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki uses a batter of flour, egg and water to create a pancake. Cabbage, meat and a garnish of yakisoba noodles are layered (think the way a pizza is layered) in a nonstick pan and cooked. Osaka-style okonomiyaki is made without the yakisoba noodles, and instead of layering ingredients, they’re mixed together and thrown in the pan (like an omelet). We were making the Osaka-style.

The savory crepe-like dish is simple, and it acts like a base for whatever ingredients you want to include. Traditionally, thinly sliced pork and beef are used, but fried eggs, cheese and fish are not uncommon. Garnishes include a Tonkatsu sauce (kind of like a sweet teriyaki sauce), fish flakes and nori flakes. (Click on “Read the rest of this entry” for recipe)

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The Friday linkfest continues, this time with interesting links for carnivores.

Over at This Is Why You’re Fat (thanks to my friend Daniel for the link), you’ll find a collection of meals that’ll cause your nutritionist to die a little inside. My favorite? The Meat Cake.

• Posted on Twitter: Eat Me Daily writes about a sculptural meat exhibit not meant for vegetarians or the faint of heart.
• Smiley’s Sweets and Creations offers a photo of the cutest-ever hamburger cupcakes you will ever see.
• UK blogger Just Cook It gets his hands on some pigs’ tails — and makes some excellent points about the detachment between animal and consumer.
• The Bitten Word summarizes how to render duck fat. And yeah, why is it that whole ducks are more readily available than duck breasts?
• Is this sexy beast getting ready to perform a duet on a cruise ship? Well, we’ll never know for sure. But we do know this: Whatever he’s gonna do, the bacon suit he’s wearing will allow him to do it in style. More bacon-based clothing: The bikini, the bra, a bacon costume.
• Omnomicon (great name) posts about how to properly disassemble lobster, making examples out of Bobster and Shelly.

Have a good one!

– Cynthia Furey

Side note: March Madness is a month-long challenge in which I will post Monday through Friday for the entire month. Thank you for reading!

David Myers’s Los Angeles eatery empire has an Orange County leg in the Mozza-esque Pizzeria Ortica, which opened in mid-January near South Coast Plaza and the OCPAC.

The restaurant has extended its three-course OC Restaurant week menu, which is a steal when you add up what you would have paid ordering these dishes a la carte. (Don’t you hate when you go to a restaurant and they try to fool you into thinking their “special” is a good deal, when really, it’s no different than ordering a la carte. We’re not fools!)

The Italian word “Ortica,” according to wordreference.com, translates to “nettle,” or “stinging nettle.” I didn’t see the ingredient on the menu, but I hear its one that Myers uses in a ravioli dish. I also hear that Myers plans on opening a second outpost of Ortica near La Cienega, where Sona thrives and the late Boule bakery (sniff) once lived.

The space itself is lovely – long and narrow with a minimalist Dean-and-Deluca feel, with tall archways and a half-open kitchen. (I love it when a kitchen has nothing to hide.)

Short thoughts on food: A pizza margherita (pictured above) is more than enough for one person, and if you’re in need of a post-theater snack, I’d say this would work for two. Here, San Marzano tomatoes, modest discs of mozzarella and wilted basil grace a thin, bubbly crust. (Click on “Read the rest of this entry” for more)

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Every serious foodie should experience a kitchen tour. You’ll learn so much about your food: where it comes from, who’s cooking it, how it’s made. There’s a big difference between peeking into a restaurant’s kitchen and being an observer from the other side of the window – though both situations offer their own set of perks. Peering through a kitchen window (like in the above picture, at Bouchon Bakery) is a cheap thrill. You feel like you’re stealing a moment – snatching a behind-the-scenes look at something that’s normally left behind the thick wall separating the dining room and the beating heart of the restaurant.

Actually being in a kitchen and watching cuisine unfold is entirely different. You’ll feel like a fly on the wall, just watching the world pass by; standing still as activity works its way around your body at a feverish pace. And if it’s a well-run kitchen, you’ll also feel a little out of place – a good kitchen will run like clockwork, and will work seamlessly without paying notice to a new face.

For the most part, you can tell a lot about a chef just by walking through the kitchen. Chez Panisse’s open kitchen speaks of Alice Waters’ nature: open, honest; welcoming you into the world of slow food (though, the opposite can be said about this pissed off cook, above). You meander through and watch a pork loin roasting on a spit, or observe as pastry cooks work dough on a bench. You can touch bottles of wine in Waters’ cellar. It’s all very romantic. (Click on “Read the rest of this entry” for more)

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Macadamia nuts are tough little suckers.

I used to think they were one of the most overpriced nuts on the market. But after a fateful weekend, this girl has learned that she knows absolutely nothing and should keep her mouth shut.

It begins: Earlier this month, some friends and I stopped at the Ventura College flea market. While the market itself was nothing to crow about, the campus was: Macadamia nut trees – tens of them – lined the outside perimeter of the campus. With bags in tow, we began to collect as many unshelled mac nuts as we could. I was giddy with the delight of not having to pay through the nose for them, even contemplating making the two-hour drive monthly for my fix.

My first project would be a macadamia nut tart. How beautiful it would be, with a homemade crust and studded with uniform, chopped mac nuts. I’d serve it with vanilla or praline ice cream, we’d sit on the porch and shoot the breeze, or sit in silence, watching the ribbons of melted ice cream pooling alongside the warm tart.

Now, I had heard that macadamia nuts were hard to crack, but people say the same things about walnuts and almonds. I paid no heed.

Was I ever sorry. These things are serious. This was not a job for a steel nutcracker. This was a job for a steel military tank. I didn’t have access to the latter.

But, be damned, I was going to have my macadamia nut tart. So I explored my options.

A Google search revealed that I was in good company – a slew of sites and blogs featured different methods in which to crack macadamia nut shells open without smashing the nutmeat into smithereens. Vise grips. Roasting. Hammers. Putting them in the freezer. Wedging them into sidewalk cracks and pounding them open. (There was also, ironically, this blog post on a key that opens them, which is commercially sold with unshelled macadamia nuts. I’m jealous.) All of these methods seemed crazy, but according to these sites, they were the only way to get into them unless you had access to the Mauna Loa plant.

I tried one method of roasting them at 350 degrees for 15 minutes to dry out the shells. I’m not quite sure this made a difference, but it did release a buttery roasted nut smell that made me want to get into them even more. Since I didn’t have a vise grip/bench vise, I grabbed a hammer, a towel and a cutting board and set up shop in the middle of my living room. I chose a nut to sacrifice, raised my hammer high above my head and came down on it with such force that it shook the entire room. BOOM. I unwrapped the towel, and the nut was broken alright – but inside was a black, crumbly mass; moldy and inedible. What gives? Furious. I needed to take this outside.

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